Satori - Don Winslow [44]
When the common grave was finished, they were lined up in front of it, and Xue Xin was eager for the bullet that would end this life. But the commandant explained that they were not worthy of expensive bullets, and would be slashed and stabbed to death instead.
Then it started, a blur of silver blades and spraying blood, and Xue Xin felt himself fall backward into the trench and was glad for death. It seemed days later when he felt the dirt falling on him, and he wanted to scream that he was still alive but he swallowed his fear and pain with the dirt.
The monks came that night.
Like ghosts they padded through the fog and dug with their hands, literally pulling him from the grave. Weeks later he could stand, weeks after that he could walk, if you could call it walking. He had bad dreams every night, waking in that grave.
Now Xue Xin walked past the loosened tile in the bridge, deftly snatched the message, and tucked it into his robe. In his other hand he clutched a slim sharp blade, meant for his belly if they came for him or if he detected anyone following him.
But no one did.
He walked undetected out of the north gate into a hutong in the north-central district. Five minutes later he was in the back of a small house, squatting by the dim glow of a small radio transmitter, into which he read the coded message.
He left the house reciting, “On mani padme hung.”
The jewel is in the lotus.
30
THE BLADE PLUNGED deep into the victim’s belly.
The man gasped and then tried to stuff his innards back into his stomach as he staggered through the alley near Luang Prabang’s crowded marketplace, but it was far too late.
The Cobra jerked the knife back, turned away, and walked quickly out the dark alley into the streets of the northern Laotian town.
It all had to do with something called “Operation X,” but the Cobra didn’t really care. All that mattered was the money, and the payments from this client were always prompt and reliable.
The Cobra fingered a small medallion and could feel the outline of the embossed face and the script —
Per tu amicu.
For your friendship.
31
A LARGE CROWD had formed in Tiananmen Square.
Traffic stopped, and Nicholai looked out his window to see a military caravan — Soviet trucks and American Jeeps — come past as the crowd hooted and jeered.
Nicholai spotted the objects of their derision.
Two men, one Western and one Asian, stood in the back of an open Jeep, propped up by PLA soldiers holding their legs, their arms bound to their sides by ropes. In an open truck behind them, a squad of soldiers sat, their rifles held barrel up. Members of the mob threw garbage and old vegetables, shouted insults, rushed at the Jeep and spat at the prisoners.
“Spies,” Chen explained, watching for Nicholai’s reaction. “An Italian and a Japanese. They were plotting to assassinate the Chairman.”
“Truly?”
“They confessed.”
Chen’s car fell in behind the military caravan as it slowly made its way past Tiananmen Square toward the Temple of Heaven. The parade halted at the Bridge of Heaven and the crowd swarmed around it like an amoeba. Soldiers jumped out of the truck and roughly pulled the prisoners from the Jeep and shoved them to an open space at the base of the bridge. Other soldiers used the rifles to push people back, as an officer formed other soldiers into a file.
“You execute them in public?” Nicholai asked.
“It teaches a lesson.”
In a reversal of ethnic stereotypes, the Italian stood silent and stoic while the Japanese prisoner’s legs gave out and he dropped to his knees, sobbing. A soldier yanked him back and then Nicholai saw a man dressed in a long black coat and black hat emerge from the back of a car and walk toward the prisoners.
He held sheaves of paper in his left hand.
“Kang Sheng,” said Chen, a tremor of fear in his voice.
Nicholai watched Kang strut in front of the crowd, stand beside the prisoners, and shout the proclamation that recited their crimes and condemned them to the people’s righteous rage. The Chairman in his mercy had allowed them to be shot instead of